Essentialism, Orientalism and “Western Civilization”

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Capital Strikes Back
By Hani Shukrallah, Global-L, 21 October 2001. Leaders speak in easily decipherable code, continuing to use the “trigger words” that incite the very feelings of cultural, religious and racial superiority, bigotry and hatred they claim to refute. Huntington, all but consigned to well-deserved oblivion during the past few years, has been revived with a vengeance.
A clash of civilisations is wrongheaded
By Jonathan Power, Jordan Times, reprinted in Al Jazeerah, 31 August 2003. There has long been a competition of civilisations. We need to know that military success on either side has never determined the direction of the civilisation in question for more than a century or two at the most. The Christian West has never honestly come to terms with how much it owes Islamic civilisation.
Manmohan for ‘confluence of civilisations’
By Amit Baruah, The Hindu, 5 November 2004. The ideology of a “clash of civilisations” and of terrorism is a threat to world peace. Hence there is a need to empower the voices of moderation and of civilised discourse to enable a ‘confluence of civilisations’ to make the world a better and safer place to live in, according to the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.
What Said Said
By Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Education, 13 December 2006. Said's book was an ambitious effort to use concepts from 20th century cultural theory to scrutinize the way Western academics and writers understood “the East” during the era of European imperial expansion.